Hi,

I intend to set up a small space for product photography @ my office. My equipment list at the moment includes a CANNON EOS 500D, a small tripod and a black square photo box. I intend to expand and would appreciate input for the community.

The product is high end, diamond jewelry so believe Ill need a decent lighting set up. Recommendations for lighting and general set up would be very appreciated.

I am also interested in purchasing used equipment, please PM me if you've got some equipment to offload.

Thanks,

gb33

Macro lens.

A light tent would be a good investment, either home made or you can buy collapsible ones like the EZ cube. (google will help there).

Seamless paper/plastic roll.

Coloured paper sheets.

A black gloss & a clear acrylic sheet.

Matt black card.

Snoot.

Zebra M flag.

Reflectors.

Thin fishing line.

Blu-Tac.

Powder free latex gloves.

Isopropanol.

Decent magnifying glass.

The list is endless, out of all the genres of photography I reckon product photography probably has the most options for home made cheats.

You could in theory light it with continuous bulbs, I don't see any need for high end gear, unless the client is going to be there when your shooting.

Could be done with 3 flashes/strobes IMO.

There's a ton of videos on jewellery photography out there, plenty of tips to be learnt from them.

Thank you for your information, I'll start with your list.

Cheers!

Try and find a Raynox DCR-150 macro attachment and get a cheap LED macro ring flash (use it as a light rather than a flash).

http://www.raynox.co.jp/english/dcr/dcr150/indexdcr150eg.htm

http://www.dinodirect.com/aputure-hl-48-macro-led-ring-flash-for-canon-nikon-olympus.html

Also consider one of these if your table is not reflective . . .

http://www.stevesphotoshop.co.uk/acrylic_riser_table_set_black_white.html

Also consider some deep black muslin and a homemade frame.

Apart from a decnt flash set up - most the items you need can be made with a bit of creativity. The black card for the background and then more card to make a snoot.

I used 2 off camera flashes with card snoots to shoot my board ...

^^Ooooo . . . that's good.

Apart from a decnt flash set up - most the items you need can be made with a bit of creativity. The black card for the background and then more card to make a snoot.

I used 2 off camera flashes with card snoots to shoot my board ...

Timberwolf 1.jpg

@ Family on the move:

Thanks for replying, I appreciate the input. For quality product shots, do you have a recommendation for a bulb type and bulb wattage? I am considering the use of two or three 200W daylight bulbs. If I were to set close to my little 50CM white light box / tent I wonder if this will be sufficient? A salesman at the Mall near my home was pushing 500W bulbs.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Greg

It's the colour temperature of the light that's important - the camera will not 'see' the light in quite the same way as our eyes - so you may get strange colour casts using normal bulbs? You can adjust this later on your computer but this adds time.

As the objects are not moving you don't need a high shutter speed - but to get enough depth of field you will want a small aperture and this will need enough light.

So I would look at bulbs designed for photo use or use flash with a diffuser and radiio triggers. 500 watt studio lights may be a bit much (and a bit hot!) - but a good neutral white bulb designed for studio use will give you the colour of light needed. Normal low energy fluorescent bulbs tend to produce a greenish light and traditional incandescent bulbs are yellow - but bulbs designed for photo use will look white. Then you need to practice with 'modifying' the light - cutting out stray light using card snoots or honeycombs. This is where the heat of the 500 watt lamp becomes an issue. Flash and video LED lights are also designed to have a neutral white light so they are good options.

The beauty of digital is that we can look at the results on screen and adjust the lighting - so play around a bit and you'll get it right. There's some Groups in flickr that specialise in product phography - mostly under the heading 'strobist'.

Here's a photo to illustrate what I mean in the post above about the colour of the lights ...

The off-camera flash at the nose of the board came out white. An LED light (that looked perfectly white to me) was used to light from the tail - and it came out blue in the photo.

^^^ If you're interested Lee make LED filter gels that if used on LED>6400k or on Tungsten 3200K come out the exact same colour.

They also do CTO conversion gels that will make an LED the same colour temp as tungsten.

Just thought I'd throw that in incase it may be of help to anyone.

http://leefilters.com/lighting/led-02.html#&sort=number

while you are taking small desktop objects, you don't need a 500W light. better invest on a small good LED flood light, easier to operate, cooler and more stable. LED light could be very close to the light box, HOT light can't.

I shot these images using 2 x 5200k 50 watt domestic light bulbs (from HomePro) and a small light tent. Canon 100mm Macro at f22.

Fimgirl - lovely shots of those classic Contax! Nice lighting.